Decline of American Empire Real: US Analyst

In an interview with the secretariat of the 2nd Int’l Conference on the Decline of the United States Hoh discussed about what to make of the so-called US decline.

In his remarks Matthew Hoh said, “The worsening situation with the American economy, particularly inequality among classes, the continued deterioration of relations between various races, increased polarization within American politics, the continued suppression of democracy within the United States, all these are signs of internal decline of the United States”.

“Losing the major air bases was a blow to the United States. It also was a blow in terms of credibility. The United States' presence diminished in Afghanistan. It was ugly and embarrassing for the Americans,” he added.

“Internally the United States is a weaker power,” Hoh maintained adding, “As it has spent between $14 and $21 trillion over the last 20 years on wars, militarization, security, intelligence; and that has been a direct trade off from the United States investing in its own people, in its own self. So if you look at the United States federal budget since 2000, anything that's not related to defense spending has gone down in real dollars; it has either remained flat or has gone down in real dollars.”

“I certainly would agree with the notion that the United States efforts to expand its empire have failed,” Hoh stressed, “And mass suffering has occurred from that, the calamity that has occurred from it is just absolutely obscene.”

“The Chinese economic growth means that China has now become this world power, the second largest economy and growing, and will eventually overtake the Americans,” he went on to say.

“One of the fears for the Americans and for the West, in general for the Chinese is that for centuries the West has been able to extract vast amounts of money from the poorer nations, the developing world, the Global South; and this has resulted in massive wealth for the West. And as China's economy has grown, and as these Chinese companies are now taking a presence, and competing with the West, for extraction from these developing poor nations, they [in the West] have a great fear that the wealth extraction from these poor nations is going to be diminished. And I think that is the basis for the China hysteria.”

Regarding American hegemony, Hoh said, “I don't know if there has ever been a time that the Americans have had the control and the complete hegemony that they have wanted. I don't believe it's ever been absolute. The Americans, very heavy handedly, sanction nations around the world; those nations that don't buy American weapons are the ones who have been sanctioned. The American sanctions are really a reflection of American trade and military policy.

"The American Empire is not one built upon principles of morality or benevolence, as more than 70% of the world's undemocratic nations, dictatorships, military regimes, autocracies receive American weapons or military training. So you can be a human rights violating nation or a dictatorship, you can suppress your people, and Americans will sell you weapons, as long as you're willing to go along with the American Empire, to follow the American dictates, to follow American trade rules. And if you don't, then you will be sanctioned. As George W. Bush, famously said in the days after 9/11, ‘you're either with us or against us.’ And that is the case for American policy.”

“American sanctions against Cuba are just an abject failure,” Hoh added. “They have not achieved their purposes. They are just cruel and barbaric and illegal. Or the case with the Chinese businesswoman [Meng Wanzhou] who was under house arrest for more than a year, because her Chinese Corporation [Huawei] was accused of doing business with Iran. How, in what fair, reasonable, legal, international system is that allowed, but under the American system we have?”

“The war in Afghanistan was remarkable in many ways,” he continued, “Because as a colonial venture it was a failure. In Afghanistan, America really did not have the extraction of wealth from Afghanistan. What it had rather though, was mass wealth being looted from the American Treasury. So it was an extraction from the United States itself. And that's why I do agree that America is in decline. So I think lack of investment in the United States itself, climate change, the realities of American politics, the polarization, the degradation of democracy in the United States will continue to grow.”

“We had a famous author in the United States named Mark Twain who was the head of the Anti-Imperialist League for a while in the United States, very much against the United States wars abroad. Its colonization of the Philippines and Cuba. Twain one time said that the best antidote to xenophobia or the fear of foreigners, or jingoism and chauvinism and thinking that your country is better than others is passport. People who I know in the United States who are most chauvinistic and believe most in American exceptionalism and think that the United States is better than other nations are people who have not travelled,” Hoh continued.

“American sanctions and policies, do nothing but drive people to extremism, in the sense of being farther away from the point you want them to be. So, we've seen this over and over again: You bomb people, you starve them; that's not going to make them come around to your views,” Hoh concluded.

The 2nd International Conference on the Decline of the United States: The Post-American World will be held on November 2, 2021, by Imam Hussein Comprehensive University (pbuh) and the Secretariat of the Expediency Discernment Council, in cooperation with the universities and research institutes.

For more information, interested parties may see the conference website at www.usdecline.ir and the virtual pages of the conference secretariat on social media at @usdecline.